The Leads Enigma
by Paychecks For Life Pres/CEO, Kurt Wilkins

LEADS, LEADS, LEADS!
How many, what kind, how often?

Many people ask us these questions. Based on almost 24 months of personal experience with the Paychecks For Life system plus having over 125,000 of my own leads in the system, here is how I respond. The first question is how many leads do I need? It seems to me that, it will depend on which of the three categories you fit into.

Newcomers
The first category could be beginners or newcomers to network marketing. Often beginners are conservative and may not be fully committed to build a profitable home-based business. Newcomers often want to put a toe in the water to sample the water, but they are not committed to jump in, just yet. As a result, many choose to start with 50 leads in our basic package.

Here is the good news and the bad news about 50 leads. Building a successful, profitable network marketing business is much like building any traditional business. The key to marketing any business or product is advertising and/or prospecting and the key to successful advertising/prospecting is to reach large numbers. Perhaps you’ve heard it said that network marketing is a numbers game! It’s true! If you are very patient and very diligent in contacting individuals that show interest by visiting your website 3 times, or completing a contact request or success profile, you will eventually achieve success. In the advertising world a highly successful direct mail campaign has a 1-2% response rate and each mailing piece costs from $.30 to $2.00 each. Most ad agencies will not even promote or represent a company that will not commit to a 6-12 month advertising campaign. Why? No consistency! Short term advertising is a waste of money and effort. It does not create predicable, sustainable results. Direct email ad campaigns have a 7-9% response rate at a fraction of the cost.

Can you succeed with 50 leads? The answer is maybe. If you see a 2% response rate that means that only 1 person may visit your website in the first 30 days. Many people would get discouraged and quit. If the response rate is 10% then 5 people may visit your website in a month. It still may not be enough traffic to produce new reps or new customers. As a result the person may get discouraged and quit.

Have you ever heard the term, “It takes money to make money?” It’s true! Every successful business person had to make a serious investment in their business to start. Then they work hard for 1-10 years and finally the business pays off. Without exception, the people who earn 6 figure incomes in network marketing either personally knew or had credibility with a large sphere of influence or they were willing to prospect large numbers of people they did not know. You will need to invest in three areas for your business to be successful.

1. You will need to join a company and become a personal customer of the product or service you will be promoting. That requires an investment.
2. You need to have an online/internet prospecting system and you need to purchase enough leads to be successful. That also requires and investment.
3. You will need to invest some time and money in personal development.

Only about 2.5% if Americans earn a six figure income. It’s probably safe to assume that most of us do not presently have all the skills and abilities we need to earn $100,000 a year or more, but they can be learned. The final factor is not an investment of money, but of time. Give your efforts enough time to compound. I don’t recommend that people even start a home-based business unless they are willing to give it 100% effort for 12 months. Too many people get excited, sign up in a company and our system, and after 30-90 days of half hearted effort they quit. Don’t start unless you’re serious. If you do start, stick with it!

Based on 24 months of observation and experience we strongly recommend that new members sign up at the basic rate which includes 50 leads, but then invest in 500 or 1,000 extra (premium) leads each month as you can afford to. When you eventually get 3,000-5,000 leads in the system you will have a constant flow of people to talk to.

Experienced Networkers
The second category of members, using our system are experienced networkers. They have 1-5 years of experience in the industry. Most have not yet hit it big, but they ran out of warm leads (personal contacts) long ago. They are converting to the use of the internet for prospecting and typically start with 1,000 leads or more and they buy 1,000 leads or more each month.

Seasoned Professionals
The last category, are seasoned professional. They usually have 5+ years experience and earn $100,000+ annually. They typically buy leads in 2,000-5,000 lead increments and have from 10,000 to 30,000 leads in our system. These Pro’s are 100% committed and serious about creating big residual income. We have 2 different reps from the same company that have each personally sponsored 75 and 100 new reps into their opportunity using this system. It took them 5-8 months and they each have almost 20,000 leads in the system. If you calculate what they earn and what they paid for leads, they paid for their leads in full after the first 20 or so reps. Do they like and recommend the system? Absolutely!

So, how many leads should you start with? As many as you can afford! Leads are like the accelerator on your car. Put in more leads if you want to go faster, less leads if you want to go slower. Our system works with a few leads, but not as fast or effectively.

What kind of leads should I purchase? We offer 4 different prices of leads.

Our discount leads do not include phone numbers and they are typically 45-60 days old. These leads are only offered occasionally and the price is currently $.19 per lead. Our premium leads are either $.30 each if purchased in an auto-purchase package or $.35 each if purchased at random, outside an auto-purchase package. Each lead, contains the phone number, name, email address and some include physical address. Ironically, the source of our highest response leads does not provide addresses.

We also offer specialized leads. We can provide leads in a specific state, city or even zip code. We can also provide leads from other countries. Almost 100% of our leads are from North America (85% US and 15% Canada). We can also supply targeted leads for a specific interest like: telecommunication, health and wellness or travel. Specialized leads range from $1.25-$4.00 and are available on a limited special order basis.

Let me talk about the difference in leads for a moment. All the leads we sell are opt-in or permission leads. In other words they have been collected from an internet website specifically about either a home-based business or a network marketing opportunity. We do not buy any leads that were collected from sweepstakes or give-away websites. From our experience, they do not work. The more a lead is scrubbed or cleaned, the more expensive it is. Let me explain, a person who has visited a collector website and that has voluntarily given their personal contact information is an opt-in lead. They state on the form that they complete that they would like to receive information about a home-based business. The lead voluntarily provides all their personal contact information. Most companies then send out a second opt-in or an opt-out ezine that says, “Our records indicate that you have requested information about a home-based business. If this is correct, click here.” This is called a double opt-in lead and the leads we purchase are all required to be double opted in. They are a better quality lead.

The most qualified leads receive a personal phone call and are surveyed to find out exactly what type of business the lead is looking for. The screeners often find out how much money they are willing to start with and other information. These leads are the most expensive ranging from $4.00 to $25 per lead.

We buy leads from 5 of the largest lead generation companies in North America. Our $.30-$.35 leads are double opt-in and include everything except addresses although the majority contain addresses. These leads are from 7 days old to 30 days old. We refuse to buy or sell leads that are over 60 days old because the response rate is not satisfactory.

We have completed many response rate tests on a variety of different types of leads. Fresh leads are only hours or days old. Dated leads are from seven days to 30 days old. In our tests their was virtually zero difference in response rate between dated leads and fresh leads, but companies may charge 2 to 10 times as much for a fresh lead. We decided to offer dated leads to our members, due to the test results and value.

Leads vary greatly in price, but here are some examples of lead costs from reliable sources. Cutting Edge Media sells great leads for from $1.50-$4.00+. Bamboo Biz offers great leads for $4.00-$8.00 per lead.

We offer our members the opportunity to buy almost identical quality leads, although none of our leads have been phone surveyed, for wholesale prices. How can we offer a $2.00 lead to our members for $.19-$.35 each? We buy leads in bulk quantities. In fact we are the largest individual purchaser of leads from 3 of the 5 companies we purchase from. When you are able to purchase 500,000 leads or 1 million leads at a time, you can get a better price than the person who is buying 100 or 1,000 leads. One of the reasons that companies like to do business with us is that we only sell our leads one time. Some companies sell the same lead repeatedly.

Two guarantees also make us unique. We guarantee zero duplication of names, in other words 100% of the leads are unique to you. Once you purchase a lead from us, you are the only person in the entire system prospecting that lead. We think that’s a huge advantage. We also guarantee that all your names have deliverable email addresses. Within the first 3 days, if you notice that some of the names were undeliverable, we replace them 100%. That’s unheard of with leads selling for $.19-$.35.

Is it worth it to pay $8 for a lead? Maybe! If you get a 100% response rate and a 100% sign up rate, then I would pay $8 or more for leads, but the fact is that even though they are more qualified, the response rate does not double or triple, it simply improves.

Here is a point that you need to remember. If you are going to compare response rates with leads from various sources and systems then you need to compare apples with apples. Recently, I had a call from a member who was complaining about a low response rate in our system in comparison with leads they purchased from another source and used in another system. I asked how many leads they had in the other system and it was 500, I then asked how many they purchased in our system and it was 50. They indicated that they had already signed up a rep in the other system, but none through ours. Doesn’t it make sense that you should have 10 times the activity, strictly based on the numbers of leads? Another member complained that they were disappointed with the response rate of the $.19 leads in comparison with the $.30-$.30 leads. There is a noticeable difference for 2 reasons. First, they are older leads and second the lead has provided less information, so they are probably not as qualified. On the other hand the $.19 leads are 46% less expensive, so even if the response rate is 30-40% less, you still may come out ahead. Just remember to compare quantity and age of leads for an equal comparison. Not apples and oranges.

Here is another factor that affects the response rate. We see the highest response rate from 15 to 21 days (2-3 weeks) after fresh leads are uploaded into the system. Here’s why! Marketing experts conclude that prospects make a buying decision only after they have received 5 to 7 consistent contacts. That’s the beauty of an automated drip system, we send out one email every three days for the first month and then one email per week until they join you or opt-out. Your lead receives their 5th contact in 15 days and their 7th contact in 21 days. Each time you purchase and upload leads you will notice the highest spike of activity not in the first few days or week, but in the 2nd and 3rd week. If you quit adding new leads to your system you will not longer see the higher response spikes.

How often should you buy leads? We suggest you add leads monthly to your system until it produces an adequate number of prospects to call. If you have more people to call than you have time for, quit adding new leads. We have many Pro’s using our system that have not added new leads for months. The reason? They are buried with activity and do not need any more. We suggest buying 500-1,000 per month until you reach the level of activity you want.

Are the $.30 or $.35 leads better than the $.19 leads? Yes and No. Yes, because they are usually up to 30 days fresher and because they have a phone number. I strongly recommend the premium leads, but some people prefer the discount leads because you can buy almost 2 for 1 and remember this is a numbers business. You can build some pretty good momentum with the less expensive leads, but we suggest you have leads of both kinds in the system. The premium leads have a superior response rate.

What kind of response rate can I expect? As I stated earlier a direct mail campaign has a 1-2% response rate. Typical email campaigns see a 7-9% response rate. We have actually had tests on our site that exceeded a 25% response rate, but that is not typical.

Ever heard that timing is everything? It is! Many things seem to affect the response rate. One major factor is the time of year. There are holidays and other seasons of the year that are slower than others. The speed at which you respond to prospects is critical to your closing rate. People buy based on emotion and not facts. When a lead has visited your website 3 times, made a contact request or completed a success profile, you show do every thing possible to call them personally in less than 24 hours. Let’s assume that when they make a contact request their emotion is at 100%. Let’s assume that for every 10 hours that lapse between their contact request and your phone call they will lose 10% of their emotion and that if it drops below 70% it will be very difficult if not impossible to get their emotion back up to 100%. We know from experience that if you will call back leads almost immediately, you success in enrolling them in your primary company goes up exponentially. If you are willing to invest money in a system and leads, make sure to invest the time to make a timely phone call while the prospect is hot. Invite them to join your opportunity or purchase your product.

Without hesitation, we can state that we offer the most affordable and most powerful turn key online prospecting system in the industry. This is a drip system that was designed to work for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year (plus leap year). If we can provide you with a 5% response rate for about 50% the cost of direct mail, is it worth the advertising investment. We think it is and in many cases our premium leads deliver can double digit response rates for our members.

Last, let me discuss persistence. Life seems to reward those individuals that work hard and don’t quit, on the other hand it seems to penalize those who are lazy and quit easily. With few exceptions, you can determine how much an individual earns by the number of people they serve. If you serve only a few the chances are excellent that they will not be earning much. If you find a way to serve thousands, you will earn a good living, but if you find a way to serve tens of thousands you can become wealthy. That is the beauty of network marketing. If you make the investment of time and effort you can create an organization of tens of thousands you can reap huge rewards because of your service. The opportunity to serve tens of thousands has typically been reserved for company Presidents and CEO’S, but networking allows you to become your own CEO.

Invest enough time, effort and money to achieve the success you desire.

Kurt Wilkins
Pres/CEO
Paychecks For Life.com, Inc.